Please tell me about the Hong Kong City Mall

During my upcoming trip to Houston I am going to have a little downtime. Just a couple of hours on Thursday and then until 1pm on Monday. I was thinking about going to the Hong Kong City Mall to wander and eat. Is it worth the trip considering I won't have a car? What places should I check out there if I decide to go?

We went to Ocean Palace for dim sum every two or three weeks for several years. The food was good and cheap and I really love that big old room. Several years ago it would be full almost every weekend, sometimes with a wait, and it's a BIG room. It was literally like being in another country.

Quick story, (Riiiiiiiiight):

My friend from Austin and his wife were visiting her mother one weekend, (probably seven or eight years ago), and I talked the lot of them into meeting me there one cold blustery February morning. I had told them about this really cool place where my son and I would often be the only non-Asians in the place. They really didn't believe me, of course. (Did I mention it's a BIG room?)

The weather kept a lot of folks away and the place was about a third full.

So we're halfway through eating, and this lovely older Chinese woman came over to our table just to ask how we came to be there, because she said, it was very rare to see a complete table with no Asians at it. My friends loved that, and of course, it contributed greatly to my food rep.

(Sorry but that's about as short as I can tell a story.)

Anyway, back to Hong Kong Mall.

After dim sum, we would always walk through the mall over to Hong Kong Market. There are lots of shops in between. There used to be a trinket store with a lot of Asian fossils that was very cool.

There's an herbal medicine shop that I always wanted to go into to see if he had a potion for the dry spot on the back of my calf.

There's a couple of bubble tea shops. There's a liquor store with lots of Asian specialties like sake and shochu.

There's clothing stores and record stores and phone kiosks.

And then, there are bakeries and pho shops. We rarely went down the mall past Hong Kong market to the food court, but the first pho I ever had was at a shop just past Hong Kong Market that was called, at the time, Pho Dung. (Loved it.)

Hong Kong Market itself was awesome. I first started going to the store at Gessner and Harwin, but when they opened the Bellaire store, I started going there. Wonderful produce, spices, cans and tins of things...

So anyway,we've begun going to Fung's Kitchen for dim sum, and 99 Ranch Market for my cooking stuff, so I don't get over there very much anymore, but it was practically a second home for a few years.